Metro 2033 - PChttp://www.gameinformer.com/games/metro_2033/b/pc/default.aspxen-USTelligent Community 1.5.134.12297 (Build: 5.5.134.12297)How 4A Games Plans To "Combat Shooter Fatigue" With Metro 2033http://www.gameinformer.com/games/metro_2033/b/pc/archive/2012/06/07/metro-last-light-e3-preview.aspxThu, 07 Jun 2012 18:38:00 GMT79ef0c18-1c65-4225-984f-fdaeab0f0862:1982441Dan Ryckert2http://www.gameinformer.com/games/metro_2033/b/pc/rsscomments.aspx?WeblogPostID=1982441http://www.gameinformer.com/games/metro_2033/b/pc/archive/2012/06/07/metro-last-light-e3-preview.aspx#comments<p><img border="0" src="http://media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/featured/thq/metro2033/last-light/e3trailer610.jpg" style="max-width:610px;" alt="" /></p>
<p>Set to release early next year, Metro: Last Light is 4A Games&rsquo; &ldquo;bid to combat shooter fatigue.&rdquo; The developer&rsquo;s global brand manager Mark Madsen stated that at the beginning of his presentation, and the demo I saw backed up his claim of presenting a different breed of FPS. With survival horror elements and a haunting post-apocalypse setting, this follow-up to Metro 2033 aims to affect gamers&rsquo; heartrates just as much as their trigger fingers.</p>
<p>Once again, players will assume the role of Artyom as he struggles to survive amongst the demons and destruction of eastern Europe. In this radioactive environment, he&rsquo;s forced to don a mask and constantly replace its air filter. With the wealth of bodies lying around, it isn&rsquo;t hard to find replacements. Artyom&rsquo;s watch was always visible in the demo I saw, and it counts down the constantly-draining air supply.</p>
<p>Air filters aren&rsquo;t the only thing you&rsquo;ll need to keep tabs on. Your head-mounted light will need to be manually cranked on a regular basis. Your mask will frequently be covered with debris and blood, and you&rsquo;ll need to wipe it off with a dedicated button. If your mask cracks too much, you&rsquo;ll need to find another. Players will have to be mindful of all of these aspects if they hope to survive, as staying alive takes more than firepower.</p>
<p>The demo began with Artyom having flashbacks to riding the subway as a child. Once the scene shifts to the game&rsquo;s present day, it&rsquo;s clear he&rsquo;s living in a vastly different world. He steps outside the subway station and into a thunderstorm, surveying dozens of destroyed buildings and a crashed airliner. Radioactive rain falls from the sky, and a fellow survivor mentions that it may be burning through his gloves.</p>
<p>As he steps into a bombed-out building, Artyom grabs an air filter from a decaying corpse. Startled by the movement, several large crab-like creatures burst from the body&rsquo;s chest and scatter away. Immediately after picking up a crude shotgun, a werewolf-like demon pounces on the protagonist. Artyom blows its head off from point blank range, then notices blood dripping from the ceiling.</p>
<p>He leaves one gruesome scene to enter another, as he steps into the wreckage of the crashed plane. It&rsquo;s completely filled with skeletons, and Artyom takes a lighter to cobwebs as he makes his way toward the cockpit. There, the game shifts to a flashback of the disaster. Two pilots are chatting when something suddenly shuts down the plane&rsquo;s power. As the plane plummets through the clouds, the pilots panic in an attempt to figure out how to prevent the imminent crash. Breaking through the clouds, a red sky filled with mushroom clouds is revealed before the plane makes impact with the ground.</p>
<p>Artyom exits the plane, ending the flashback. A flying demon swoops down and picks him up, slashing at his face before losing its grip and dropping the player character to the ground. Before Artyom knows it, he&rsquo;s assaulted by a pack of the werewolf-like creatures. In an attempt to find shelter from the attackers, he sprints down a set of stairs to a subway station. There, fellow survivors fire flamethrowers at the creatures as a giant metal door closes. Once the door closes, the survivors are temporarily safe as the demo comes to an end.</p>
<p>While this look at the game made the action appear very linear in nature, it was intense to watch even without having my hands on the controls. With Metro: Last Light&rsquo;s genuinely creepy atmosphere, 4A Games may succeed in their attempt to make a different kind of shooter.</p>
<div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.gameinformer.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=1982441" width="1" height="1">ShooterPCMetro 2033e320124a gamesthqe3metro last lightPreviewA Dreary Subway Ride Well Worth Takinghttp://www.gameinformer.com/games/metro_2033/b/pc/archive/2010/03/16/a-dreary-subway-ride-well-worth-taking.aspxTue, 16 Mar 2010 19:53:00 GMT79ef0c18-1c65-4225-984f-fdaeab0f0862:256430Phil Kollar0<p><img src="http://gameinformer.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/610x0/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00.00.00.33.26/4024.metro-2033-pc.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>Having followed very little pre-release coverage for Metro 2033, my expectations going in were almost wholly based off one piece of info I&rsquo;d heard about Ukrainian developer 4A Games: The team was formed by devs who had previously worked on S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. Knowing that, I steeled myself for an open-ended shooter full of ambition and technical issues. The ambition is there in spades, but Metro 2033 is an impressively polished and extremely linear experience that makes for an excellent debut.</p>
<p>Metro 2033 takes place in a post-apocalyptic Moscow, but you won&rsquo;t spend too much time on the city&rsquo;s bombed out, radioactive surface. The citizens of the fallen city have taken to the abandoned subway tunnels, and aside from a few excursions topside, most of your time is spent in these grimy passageways.</p>
<p>If that sounds a bit cramped, the level design matches the premise perfectly. From the second you start the campaign, you follow a straight line to the finale with only a handful of opportunities to explore alternate paths or side missions. What a glorious straight line it is.</p>
<p>In true Half-Life fashion, the linear level design is balanced by incredible set pieces that break up the regular pacing. Throughout your journey to save your home village of Exhibition, you&rsquo;ll take control of turrets in tense defense scenarios, sneak aboard a Communist tram, experience strange hallucinations, and more. In one particularly memorable sequence, you must carry a little boy on your shoulders through a section of the tunnel, an act of bravery that causes your movement and aiming to be compromised for a brief but enjoyably challenging stretch.</p>
<p>Half-Life 2 may be the perfect point of comparison to Metro 2033. Like Gordon Freeman, mostly silent protagonist Artyom is often joined by invincible AI partners. And like Valve&rsquo;s classic FPS, the gunplay isn&rsquo;t the star so much as the fascinating world built around it. You can look down ironsights like in a Call of Duty game, but the aim snaps to enemies quickly and most of the battles devolve into taking down enemies as quickly as possible instead of taking strategic positions. A handful of levels allow for stealth solutions, but it&#39;s so easy to run and gun through bandits and soldiers that only the most obsessive Achievement hunters will want to move through without getting caught.</p>
<p>The game&rsquo;s eight to ten hours are spotted with stops at some of the communities struggling to survive underground after a vaguely described nuclear apocalypse. These small villages may be near extinction, but their few inhabitants are unique and often partake in fascinating dialogue that fleshes out the world. Friendly humans are matched by an impressive array of opponents, both natural (remnants of Communists and Nazis warring for territory) and supernatural (including the werewolf-esque nosalises and slimy amoebas). One of those supernatural forces, the Dark Ones, has threatened your village, which forces you to head out and search for protection.</p>
<p>If you can survive all the obstacles and find what you need to save your home, the game delivers a fantastic climax, lifting you out of the subways and above the city for a surprising final mission. Very little incentive is offered to replay the game, but the core experience is awesome enough to warrant checking out.</p>
<p>One downside to the game is a much-touted unique feature that isn&rsquo;t fully developed: the ability to use bullets as currency. The weapon selection is a very standard set of pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, and sniper rifles. Though you can buy gun upgrades (scopes, silencers, etc.) and items (med packs, body armor), I rarely found myself willing to spend ammo instead of hanging onto it for later; vendors simply didn&rsquo;t carry interesting enough stuff to make me conflicted.</p>
<p>Despite those nitpicks and a couple frustrating late-game sections, Metro 2033&rsquo;s greatest success is the consistency of its pacing. You&rsquo;re constantly encountering new factions, discovering interesting new locations, or being tasked to do something you haven&rsquo;t done before. With this stellar first effort, 4A Games has handily risen above its team&rsquo;s past efforts in terms of approachability and fun, if not innovation. Metro 2033 is almost certainly destined to be a cult hit. If you enjoy single-player shooters, you owe it to yourself to get in on the (below-) ground floor.</p>
<div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.gameinformer.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=256430" width="1" height="1">ShooterPCReviewMetro 2033